The Opening of this Show

In the Studio

HATTIE: Hi. I'm Hattie Bryant. If you work for yourself or if you think you might want to someday, stay with us for the next few minutes. This show is all about starting and growing a business. Typically we take you to a business and give you a chance to learn from one owner, however, today you'll meet several who all have one thing in common -- they go home to work. Prior to the industrial revolution we were farmers, shopkeepers, craftsmen and we worked where we lived. The farmer on the land, the shopkeeper above her shop. After the industrial revolution we started going to work for other people and we left home. Well, now we're staying home. We're returning to our old ways, but with new tools. So we can be anywhere at anytime without leaving home.

(Voiceover) The first time we took you to home-based companies we went off road in central Oregon and found Greg Steckler, owner of Log Rhythms.

GREG STECKLER: Good morning. Good morning.

HATTIE: Well you must be Greg.

GREG: I am.

HATTIE: I thought I was never going to get here.

GREG: Come on in and take a look. I worked for 18 years out of my truck as a log home general contractor, and although that was very enjoyable it was time to do other things and I fell in love with computers about 4 years ago and wow. I hung up the chainsaw and traded it in for a monitor and a keyboard. Come on over Hattie, I'd like you to meet Kevin Taylor. Kevin, this is Hattie.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) In the middle of 45 acres and surrounded by the Bureau of Land Management, Greg and his one employee produce plans for log homes. The growth and client demand forced Greg to move into traditional offices in town.

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HATTIE: (Voiceover) Not far from Greg, in a cluster of homes we found Brett LaSorella.

BRETT LASORRELLA: (Voiceover) I really like being able to use my time effectively and everything I need is right at my fingertips. I do custom software development, systems integrations, using computers to solve business problems. My goal is to be able to live and work anyplace in the world. It's possible in this day and age if you've done your homework, you have the background, like to work alone, use a support network to do practically anything if you've got the goods. If you've got the skills, the intelligence and the drive. Those things aren't easy, but they're, they're possible. So if you develop yourself that way, you can do what you want.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Then in a cozy Dallas neighborhood, we found Sue Coffman, a PhD in English. She left academia in 1992 and has not looked back. She is the grammar lady.

SUE COFFMAN: The name of my business is WordsWorth, named after my favorite poet, William Wordsworth. And it is also a description of my business because I can write for you, I can edit for you or I can teach you how to write better. All I need to do my work is a computer, a fax machine, and a telephone. Now that's money in the bank. And in fact through networking and through referrals I have, I have gotten a lot of clients that I have never met.

HATTIE: He loves you (referring to her dog) being at home all the time.

SUE: Oh yeah, it's great. They don't have to wait for me to come home at night.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) We drove 20 miles from the art district of Santa Fe to meet Joel Greene who makes a living by painting at home.

JOEL GREENE: I don't have a lot of money by a lot of people's standards, but I manage to spend my time doing pretty much what I want to do. I like nothing better if I can not even start the car for three or four days, and just stay out here and do my work and nap and read.

HATTIE: Can you imagine yourself doing anything else?

JOEL: No, I don't and I've thought about this sometimes. I can't imagine myself doing it and the cynic in me says, "That's because you're too dumb and lazy to do anything else."

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HATTIE: There he is.

RON: Welcome Hattie.

HATTIE: Hey Ron. (Voiceover) To learn more about companies operating from homes today, we decided not to look all over the country, but to look at the end of our own hallway and behind our own door. (On the production set) Hey Bruce, can you pay Doris, please.

Yes. It's true, we create this television series, its supporting website and a new business offering CPA's continuing professional education from our home. Bruce Camber, my husband, is the founder and executive producer of Small Business School. He is having fun.

BRUCE CAMBER: Here we are in one of my favorite spots in the building. Just love it. Love to come up here to the helipad.

HATTIE: The roof.

BRUCE: And look out, we're five minutes from our cherished airport. We're ten minutes from the Del Coronado. We're 20 minutes from Tijuana. We have the playground of the mountains and we have all the resources of this fabulous city. What is there not to love?

HATTIE: You forgot to mention the Pacific Ocean. (Voiceover) From a high-rise condominium in downtown San Diego, people are running businesses. And this is just one of the thousands of places like this in every city and soon we believe in every town in America. Do you think you'll ever go back to a place where you have to get in the car and drive to an office.

BUD CRYSTAL: Oh no, why. I wouldn't want to.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Our neighbor, Bud Crystal is the global expert on CEO compensation.

BUD: And you're right, zero commute. I mean it's five seconds to the office, except if my wife's in the way you've got to shove her, it's seven seconds then. (Big smile.) Then you have arguments, she gets mad for 30 minutes, you don't count that.

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HATTIE: Got some good weather today. Well Ron, how do you get anything done in here, look at this view. (Voiceover) Also our neighbor Ron Bowman, runs his real estate enterprise from his magnificent home.

So you never found a home office to be a detriment to building a business?

RON BOWMAN: No. It's not a detriment but you sure get involved sometimes and you, sometimes you want to get away from it a little more. So you may, have to take a long weekend or something to get away from the office. I've got stuff scattered throughout the Midwest. I've got 560 apartments in Manhattan, Kansas. I've got 150,000 feet of commercial space in Kansas City that's a medical building, an office building. I've got quick shops up in Omaha and other stuff strung around the Midwest. The only way that you could leave that and manage everything from California now is due to the Internet, due to email, due to the fax machine. I can sit here and do almost anything I could do there.

I can send my manager out and he can take digital pictures and email them to me if we've got a specific problem that I need to look at. They can email me a document and I can print off an original document and sign it and maybe overnight it back. And I've found I can do business here just as easy as what I could when I was in Kansas and maybe less time than what it took to get the documents across town than what it does to get it from California to there.

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BRUCE: We have more tools right in this office then they had in the CIA ten years ago. We have so many tools, we don't need to go anywhere. We've got it all right here. There's nothing in those big office buildings that we can't have right here. There's no privilege behind the towers of the Fortune 500. They have nothing that we don't have. So why should we go anywhere.

The issue is who are you and what do you want to do with your life.

BUD: The main thing I have to do is produce an article once a week, and that takes a certain amount of time to research the article so you have to go to documents and you do mathematical modeling and you use all sorts of tools that you use in this field to get the information needed to do the article and then you write the article, and then you send it to New York and then you start fighting with the editors. For 20 years I was a consultant and people paid for my advice. I suppose you could say when I was a Professor at Berkley, people paid -- I wasn't giving advice, I was almost issuing orders to students.

HATTIE: That was the best part.

BUD: Telling them what they're supposed to believe. And now, you know, I write articles for Bloomberg and I get paid for articles and I do some expert witness work. In 1973, a CEO of a major company made about 45 times the pay of an average worker. By 1991 when I wrote a book it was up to 150 times. And now it's about 500 times the pay of a worker. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for some of these pay packages. And in studying these ratios of pay, I figure by about 2025 we're going to have the same ratio of pay in America as existed in 1789 when Louis XVI was King of France and you know what happened to Louis XVI, and by the way they got his wife too.

HATTIE: Right!

BUD: John Kenneth Galbraith wrote an article back in the 60's when the tax rate was 91% in this country. And he said he couldn't understand why executives were clamoring for raises when they had to give all but 9% away to the government. And he said the answer was the executives adopted the convenient way of looking, they looked only at their pretax pay. In effect, whoever has the biggest package is...

HATTIE: Wins. Is winning. Or is at the top of the heap.

BUD: Yes, yes. Males are always interested in size.

HATTIE: And I will say to everybody, that Bud has a huge house.

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HATTIE: (To Ron Bowman) Did you ever dream when you were 16 years old in Kansas that you would be sitting on top of the world in San Diego, California?

RON: I recall sitting in college in one of the lecture classes and thinking if I can make $15,000 a year, I'd be on top of the world. That is like nothing.

HATTIE: Well you did that a long time ago, right. And you achieved that goal very quickly.

RON: Yes.

HATTIE: And you just kept setting new ones.

RON: Yes. You've always got to have goals.

HATTIE: There's got to be something you're doing right that would be instructive to people watching this in terms of building a business.

RON: I did something. That first home I did was different than what everybody else was doing in the area. It was some things that I learned from the architect that I worked for while I was in high school and I brought some of my previous learnings along with me.

HATTIE: So was it so different when I'm driving down the road and I stop and slam my breaks on and go, "Wow, that's so different." It looked different?

RON: It was a different type of construction, not the standard frame construction that everybody else was doing in the area.

HATTIE: Okay, so maybe one key to success is do it different?

RON: Different and maybe better than the other guy. I mean you can't just be different. You've got to be, I'm a Type A personality. I'm very insistent on perfection. And everything had to be just perfect and consequently, in the construction business that gets you lots of points.

HATTIE: Okay.

RON: But I had a lot of clients who waited years to have me do work too, so. When I shut down my business, it took four years to work off the list that I had accumulated.

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HATTIE: How do you keep on top of things, how do you know where you are now to set your next level of goals?

RON: Well every year I make up a new financial statement, and in that we go through and put the current values on the properties that we own. Get reappraisals or whatever is necessary to come up with those. And it turns into a kind of a game on how much you can add to the bottom line every year. But, you really have to stay on top of what you've got. Like in Kansas City right now, the leasing market is running about 20% vacant on the commercial side. My product is running like 4% vacant, because I constantly remind my broker what I have vacant. And consequently he stays on top of my stuff.

HATTIE: If you had a 20 year old in that same architecture class that you took, come to you today and say, "Ron, I want to be like you." What would you tell them?

RON: Hard work. Listen to your clients, put in your time, and you should make it.

HATTIE: (To Bud Crystal) You're sitting in a beautiful home on the harbor of San Diego, just about as far away from where a lot of people think big decisions are made in New York City.

BUD: Yeah, I should be in New York, which I was for 24 years. I think the thing that saves me now that I think about it, is the media, because I do talk to them-- I don't see them, but I'm on the phone probably 2 or 3 hours every day talking to various people all around the world.

HATTIE: (To Bruce Camber) So in addition to making television, you're publishing a large amount of support to help the viewer learn more.

BRUCE: Constantly.

HATTIE: So you're really manufacturer and a publisher.

BRUCE: We are. We're manufacturing and publishing.

HATTIE: Now I want to ask the question. How do you do that from a home office?

BRUCE: We have the most incredible infrastructure of computers. We have installed computers and we're installing more computers every day. They're called edge servers. We have our primary computer in Alabama. When we turn on our computers we're directly connected to our main computer and all of our edge servers.

HATTIE: What kind of work goes on on the flat screens behind you right now?

BRUCE: WE acutally edit the rough cut of a show. We take the raw footage in and you will sit down with our editor who especially comes flying in from Dallas, who's a very special person. And you'll sit at these computers and actually pull the story together, it's called offline editing. And the three of us will concur on the storyline and the major parts of it. And then John will take it back with him to Dallas and really fine tune it. Make everything beautifully equalized, sound and visual.

HATTIE: Tell me when you got the 'ah-ha,' or the insight or it hit you, I should office at home or I could office at home. When did that happen?

BRUCE: This is a little strange because I think I had a epiphany in 1979 when we were doing a special project at MIT and we began seeing the power, not of the Internet then, but of network computing. Well obviously in 1994 when the internet began to break open, and we started the television show, I began to realize, "My goodness, we can live anywhere, we can be anywhere and we can do anything we want at anytime we want." The Internet was a great awakening for me. It was a wonderful 'ah-ha' because now it was, "Wow, it's no longer just Massachusetts, but you know, I can live anywhere."

LB

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In the Studio

HATTIE: In 1979 when I started my business, I officed at home. My initial goal was to keep overhead low, but as I worked that way, I realized there are lots of reasons to work at home. My favorite reason, zero commute time. Just imagine what we could accomplish if we could make productive all those human resource hours wasted and frustrated in commuting. What could we accomplish if we could save all the wear and tear on our vehicles and cut down our energy consumption. What else could we have been doing with those dollars. Surely we can be making ever more perfect workspaces within our homes. Home offices are especially springing up in high rises throughout the cities of the world. That's even better. It preserves more of our open spaces, reduces urban sprawl and aggregates more business resources within walking distance. So let's come full circle. The information revolution has become the knowledge revolution. Let's move on to an insight revolution and most of that will happen by going within, not by running out and about.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) At SmallBusinessSchool.org, there is self-help study for people who want to start a business and for those who want to grow the business they have. To learn more about this episode, choose the overview. You can read every word you're hearing today when you choose transcript. And go deeper with the case study. There's streaming video and access to interactive study guides throughout the site

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BUD: The thing is I do a lot of thinking and, and it's just nice to be in a place where it's quiet. Where you don't have co-workers barging in, saying, "Hey, you got a couple minutes. I want to talk to you about something." Or whatever, and so I really -- I enjoyed working at home. Now, in the early years when I did that I had a tremendous amount of client contact because I was a consultant. So I had lots of interaction with people.

HATTIE: Did you go to them?

BUD: I would go to them for meetings. I was a one man little factory. I mean I come home, and put on my work clothes. And then you know, saw and nail and everything and then build something. Then you put on this nice suit and then carry it to a boardroom and show it to them. For me working at home is an advantage because I'm a workaholic.

HATTIE: Let's talk about that. At two in the morning, you get an idea.

BUD: I mean I once went to a shrink when I lived in New York under tremendous pressure. And she spent several sessions with me and she said, "You know, you really don't need to see me." She said, "You're just an obsessive -- a garden variety obsessive compulsive neurotic." And she said, "Some people wash their hands a thousand times a day, other people face east. You just like to work." And she said, "I know you because I'm 83 years old, I'm working six days a week myself." And she said, "Now, my advice to you is very simple. Don't ever stop working, because if you do you'll probably fall into such a depression you might kill yourself."

HATTIE: Would you say that you're a workaholic?

BRUCE: I would say that I am passionately in love with the vision of a new future and that I will work tirelessly to see that future happen. Otherwise, what's the alternative. More of the same?

If going and working for a Fortune 500 or a Fortune 1000 company has meaning and value to you, do it. That's a wonderful thing to do. But if you're driven by some inner vision, if you really dislike something about the world and you want to change it, then start your own business and go for it.

RON: You have to be a perfectionist. You have to really be, work with the people closely and listen to them. They're going to recommend you and they're going to wait for you the next time they want to do a project.

BUD: The first thing I'd say, you have to be single-minded. You really -- like a horse with blinders on. I'm not going to be distracted by television or this and that. And I'm not going to -- if you have a home, not going to walk out in the garden and start picking up the flowers. Oh, nice pool, I think I'll take a dip, you know. That sort of thing.

HATTIE: What keeps you jazzed? When you wake up in the morning, what gets you out of bed?

RON: You need to have a project. Got have one of these that I'm working on buying or selling or renovating or something. I've got too much of that in my blood that I've got to have a project. The people close to me say that when I'm not involved in something very heavily, I'm not a happy person. I'm always pushing to do something new. I'm to the point to where I don't need to work anymore, but I still am driven for some reason to continue to build a portfolio and to build a network.

BRUCE: I don't think I've worked a day in my life, actually I've always played. But my play is my work and my work is understanding something about the very essence of life.

BUD: To me it's the worst thing in the world is to have a job that you really don't like, because it takes so much of your time. You ruin your whole life. But if you have a job you like, I don't think you ever want to get rid of it. What else is there to do?

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PS

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Barbara Granneman grew her home based business with direct marketing and it teaches children in their homes.

BARB GRANNEMAN: The Midwest School Of Music was formed in '98 to give parents an option for music lessons. So I decided that if we targeted a specific demographic in Indianapolis that it would really shortcut the time it took to get a studio running. So we -- my husband and I drove around neighborhoods that had obvious numbers of children in them, swing sets and you know, numerous suburbs and we sent out postcards and had a very good response.

HATTIE: How did you get the list for that neighborhood?

BARB: We just addressed them as a current resident and -- we copied down addresses. We drove through many…

HATTIE: You didn't buy a list that was spit out of a computer somewhere. You created the list yourself by hand, by driving the neighborhoods.

BARB: Well and using a tape recorder for just speaking the names of the addresses into it. It was simple. My philosophy is you don't have to put a lot of money into something to get started.

HATTIE: Do you remember how many pieces you mailed in your first mailing?

BARB: We mailed approximately 500, and we consistently received a 1% return.

HATTIE: Tell me where you are now. How many students and teachers today?

BARB: We have about 450 students and about 45 teachers. We teach primarily in the student's homes, but we also teach in after school adjunct programs. And that's a very popular thing.

HATTIE: And it all started with a postcard.

BARB: With a postcard.

In the Studio:

HATTIE: The new business infrastructures that have emerged with the advent of digital workflow and digital communications has disintermediated space and time. We're being given license to return home and make a private workspace that can readily blanket the world. I'll see you next time.